Franz Hildebrandt-Harangozó

Many people keep referencing Alexander Lerchner’s “The Abstraction Fallacy” (Lerchner, 2026) as a set of valid arguments against the notion of computational functionalism with regard to phenomenal consciousness. But many of his arguments are not valid. We’ll here address some of its points, and to use this to elaborate on some of the notions around computational functionalism and some epistemological/metaphysical ideas around consciousness and its possibility in artificial systems. When it comes to the nature of computation, physics, or the distinction of the real and the simulated, metaphysics is a serious and formal discipline. This is not a pick-your-personal-angle practice, especially with regard to the makeup of the entities you use to build your arguments, world-model, or metaphysics. The Abstraction Fallacy is one example of a paper that does not consider its objects with sufficient scrutiny. The main examples of such objects are concepts like intrinsicality, continuous physics, thermodynamic properties, and “the territory”, which Lerchner uses as a basis for his arguments, but which upon closer examination do not actually have the basis he imagines they do. This is neither a full treatment of The Abstraction Fallacy’s arguments nor a full treatment of the concepts we introduce here, but is meant to serve as a preliminary response.

This essay is a summary of my introductory exploration of the notion of phenomenal consciousness which took place between 2019 and 2024, partly through studies, tutoring, and discussions with people at Humboldt University Berlin and through engagement with the ideas of Joscha Bach, Thomas Metzinger, Michael Graziano, Frances Egan, Stephen Wolfram, Nigel Cutland, Immanuel Kant, and Marcus Müller, some of my own thoughts, and some self-observation as well as some meditation. I do not claim originality nor correctness.